walking upstream…
Jamie xx
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photo: jordan uhl · cc by 4.0 ↗Jamie xx
James Thomas Smith grew up in South London and, as a teenager, joined the indie trio the xx in 2006, becoming the band's producer and beatmaker — the architect of the cavernous, minimal space around Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim's vocals. Away from the group he built a parallel career in dance music: the 2011 remix album We're New Here, reworking Gil Scott-Heron's I'm New Here in full, followed by singles like 'Far Nearer,' 'Sleep Sound,' and 'All Under One Roof Raving.' His 2015 solo debut In Colour distilled two decades of British club music — rave, UK garage, house, and dancehall's steel-pan brightness — into something wistful and widescreen, earning Mercury and Grammy nominations. A second solo album, In Waves, arrived in 2024.
the sound in question
2015
GoshJamie xx
walk the tributaries ↓
Gil Scott-Heron1970s · Spoken word / Soul / Jazz / Proto-rap
The most literal link in Jamie xx's catalogue: in 2011 he reworked Gil Scott-Heron's final album 'I'm New Here' in its entirety as 'We're New Here,' rebuilding the late poet-singer's weathered voice into UK-garage and bass-driven productions. Scott-Heron's spoken, soul-inflected delivery became raw material — the treated, sampled human voice used as an instrument, a device Jamie xx has kept returning to across his solo work.
listen: upstream & heresource: Wikipedia ↗
2010
New York Is Killing MeGil Scott-Heron
2011
NY Is Killing MeJamie xx
listen forSet Scott-Heron's original 'New York Is Killing Me' beside Jamie xx's 'NY Is Killing Me' — the same hand-clap groove and gravelly vocal, now stretched over skipping two-step drums and a much colder, more cavernous space.
Four Tet2000s-2010s · Folktronica / Electronic / IDM / Ambient
Jamie xx and Kieran Hebden came out of the same South London orbit — both attended Putney's Elliott School, the informal nursery for a generation of British electronic producers. Four Tet's 'folktronica' method — building tracks from chopped, looped samples and acoustic fragments rather than conventional song structure — is a clear model for Jamie xx's own cut-and-paste approach.
listen: upstream & here
2010
Angel EchoesFour Tet
2014
Sleep SoundJamie xx
listen forPlay Four Tet's 'Angel Echoes' next to 'Sleep Sound' — both spin a single sliced vocal fragment into a hypnotic loop, letting a warm, granular sample stand in for a sung melody while hand-played-sounding percussion patters around it.
Burial2000s · Dubstep / Electronic / UK Garage
Another Elliott School alumnus, Burial mapped the sound of late-night South London — vinyl crackle, rain-soaked reverb, and pitched, anonymous vocal snippets over swung, garage-derived rhythms. That melancholy, dance music remembered rather than danced to, runs through Jamie xx's more nocturnal, nostalgic tracks, which reach for the memory of a night out rather than the night itself.
listen: upstream & here
2007
ArchangelBurial
2014
All Under One Roof RavingJamie xx
listen forCompare Burial's 'Archangel' with 'All Under One Roof Raving' — both are built from ghostly, chopped vocal fragments and the ambient hiss of a room, and both evoke the atmosphere of a rave rather than delivering a straightforward one.